1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet printer.
2. Related Art
One type of liquid ejecting apparatus is an ink jet printer, hereinafter referred to as a printer, which includes a recording head, comprising a liquid ejecting head, which is capable of ejecting ink or other liquid supplied from an ink cartridge onto a recording medium through nozzles provided in the recording head in order to perform a printing process.
In such a printer, when printing is suspended, ink is thickened by the volatilization of the ink solvent in the ink existing in the nozzles. In some instances, this causes the nozzles to become clogged, and printing failures, such as dot omissions, may occur. In order to solve this problem, a flushing operation may be performed, wherein the ink is ejected as a waste ink from the nozzles of the recording head into a flushing box (liquid container). The ink ejected into the flushing box is absorbed to an absorber contained in the flushing box and is stored in the absorber.
In some printers, there is a function for using a suction pump or suction unit to apply a suction force on the ink stored in the flushing box in order to move the ink outside the flushing box. In such printers, compared with the printers which does not include the configuration for removing the ink in the flushing box, the ink holding force of the absorber is held over a long time while the ink solvent is suppressed from being volatilized between ink removal processes, so that thickened ink may be prevented from becoming deposited in the flushing box (for example, see JP-A-2005-329693).
However, recently, a printer has been created with a recording head which is sloped by a predetermined angle (for example, see JP-A-2006-192679). In this printer, in correspondence with the arrangement of the recording head, a flushing box is provided such that an inner bottom thereof is sloped with a corresponding predetermined angle. Accordingly, the ink ejected into the flushing box by performing flushing is not equally distributed in the absorber and gravitates toward the lower side of the absorber. That is, since the ink cannot be held in the overall absorber, the ink holding capability of the absorber deteriorates compared with the case where the ink can be equally dispersed in the absorber. Accordingly, when the suction pump is driven before the lower side of the absorber is completely saturated by the ink, the ink removal process is deficient. This means that the number of times of driving of the suction pump is increased and a load applied to the suction pump is increased compared with the case where the ink is equally distributed in the absorber.